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Intended for healthcare professionals

Journal of Health Psychology

Health Psychology & Sport

Collection:

FOOTBALL IS GOOD FOR YOUR SLEEP

On the occasion of the FIFA 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The FIFA World Cup kicks off on 15 June 2018 with Russia v. Saudi Arabia and a few billion viewers across the world. The football tournament runs for four weeks, with 32 teams battling it out over 64 matches. It promises to be a crazy few weeks with football fans going ‘mental’ the world over.  Needless to say JHP has theory, hypotheses and lots and lots of data on the role played by football, other sports and physical activities in human well-being. We have something for everyone in this Collection of recent articles from JHP.

Who would have guessed that playing football is good for your sleep? According to Serge Brand et al. (2009; Article 1) it most definitely is: ‘chronic’ football players report shorter sleep onset latency, fewer awakenings, higher scores of sleep quality and a lower variability of sleep from weekdays to weekends. One doubts these benefits for a good night’s sleep extend to head coaches, the Mourinhos, Wengers and Pochettinos.

Or that being an professional ex-footballer might cause pain and feelings of frustration? Ex-professional footballers with osteoarthritis (OA) identify the cause of their OA with aspects of their playing career. Living with OA involves pain, surgery, medication and restricted mobility and there are feelings of frustration associated with disruption to work, social and leisure activities (Turner et al., 2002, Article 2).

Or that children might have their lives changed by watching sportsmean and women on the telly? Children and adolescents obtain ideals and ideas about appearance from watching sports in the media. Appearance-related comparisons are more common among girls, whereas sports/ability-related comparisons are more common for boys (Tatangelo and Ricciardelli, 2015, Article 3). The trouble is that, while boys tend to view media comparisons as inspiring, e.g. the footballers themselves, whereas girls report negative emotions (perhaps seeing footballers’ wives, one wonders)? 

The last article in the Collection is by no means the least.  Todd McElroy et al.’s (2015)  article “The physical sacrifice of thinking…” caused a social media storm. Their finding was that people who prefer to think more are less physically active in their daily lives than people who do not prefer to think. Hundreds of media reports twisted this to suggest that more intelligent people are lazy! Not quite what Todd McElroy showed, but, hey, who cares as long it baits a few million clicks. 

Now you are too intelligent to believe that, and definitely not lazy!

David F Marks

Editor-in-Chief

Journal of Health Psychology and Health Psychology Open

Virtual Issue Table of Contents

To view an article, click on the title.


‘Football Is Good for Your Sleep’ 
Favorable Sleep Patterns and Psychological Functioning of Adolescent Male Intense Football Players Compared to Controls 

Serge Brand, Johannes Beck, Markus Gerber Martin Hatzinger, Edith Holsboer-Trachsler
Journal of Health Psychology, 2009 vol. 14, 8: pp. 1144-1155

It is commonly assumed that physical activity exerts a favorable impact on sleep, although scientific evidence is lacking. This study investigated the impact of football sports on the sleep patterns of 36 male chronic and intense football players and 34 controls. Participants completed a sleep log for seven consecutive days. Compared to controls, football players reported shorter sleep onset latency, fewer awakenings, higher scores of sleep quality and a lower variability of sleep from weekdays to weekends. The findings suggest that football sports activity is positively associated with both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of sleep.


Play Hurt, Live Hurt: Living with and Managing Osteoarthritis from the Perspective of Ex-professional Footballers 

Andy Turner, Julie Barlow, Brian Libery
Journal of Health Psychology 2002 7:3, 285-301

Personal accounts of living with osteoarthritis (OA) are rare and qualitative research has focused mainly on the experiences of women. As yet no studies have focused solely on the experience of men living with OA. The primary focus of this study was the experience of living with OA from the perspective of ex-professional footballers in the UK using semi-structured interviews with interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants identified the cause of their OA to be associated with aspects of their playing career. Living with OA involved pain, surgery, medication and restricted mobility. Feelings of frustration were often associated with disruption to work, social and leisure activities. Participants’ experiences and memories of playing professional football were important in helping them manage the threat of the disease. The findings have provided an insight into the experience of ex-professional footballers as they seek to accommodate to a life of pain, disability and functional impairment.


Children’s body image and social comparisons with peers and the media 

Gemma L Tatangelo, lina A Ricciardelli
Journal of Health Psychology 2015 22:6, 776-787

Social comparisons are related to the development of body dissatisfaction among adolescents and adults, yet this relationship remains relatively unexamined among children. This study examines children’s peer and media-related social comparisons, and how this impacts on their body image. Children aged 8–10 years completed interviews (17 girls and 19 boys in individual interviews, and 16 girls and 16 boys in focus groups). Analyses revealed that appearance-related comparisons were more common among girls, whereas sports/ability-related comparisons were more common for boys. In addition, boys viewed media comparisons as inspiring, whereas girls reported negative emotions. Implications for future research and prevention programmes are discussed.

‘That’s not masculine’ 
Masculine Capital and Health-related Behaviour

Richard O. De Visser, Jonathan A. Smith, Elizabeth J. McDonnell
Journal of Health Psychology 2009 14:7, 477-487

In recent years increasing attention has been given to how different masculinities are expressed in young men’s health behaviour. To examine whether men can use competence in key health-related masculine domains to compensate for other non-masculine behaviour, group discussions were conducted with men aged 18—21 living in London, England. The analysis revealed the ways in which competence in traditionally masculine health-related domains produces masculine ‘capital’, which can be used to compensate for non-masculine behaviour in other domains. However, the capacity to trade this capital is limited because different masculine and non-masculine behaviours have different values.


Extreme sports are good for your health: A phenomenological understanding of fear and anxiety in extreme sport 

Eric Brymer, Robert Schweitzer
Journal of Health Psychology 2012 18:4, 625-637

Extreme sports are traditionally explored from a risk-taking perspective which often assumes that participants do not experience fear. In this article we explore participants’ experience of fear associated with participation in extreme sports. An interpretive phenomenological method was used with 15 participants. Four themes emerged: experience of fear, relationship to fear, management of fear, and fear and self-transformation. Participants’ experience of extreme sports was revealed in terms of intense fear but this fear was integrated and experienced as a potentially meaningful and constructive event in their lives. The findings have implications for understanding fear as a potentially transformative process..


A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Taking Part in `Extreme Sports' 

Carla Willig
Journal of Health Psychology, 2008 vol. 13, 5: pp. 690-702

This article is concerned with what it may mean to individuals to engage in practices that are physically challenging and risky. The article questions the assumptions that psychological health is commensurate with maintaining physical safety, and that risking one's health and physical safety is necessarily a sign of psychopathology. The research was based upon semi-structured interviews with eight extreme sport practitioners. The interviews were analysed using Colaizzi's version of the phenomenological method. The article explicates the themes identified in the analysis, and discusses their implications for health psychology theory and practice.


The Construction of the Adolescent Male Body through Sport 

Lina A. Ricciardelli, Marita P. McCabe, Damien Ridge
Journal of Health Psychology 2006 11:4, 577-587

The present study examined the role played by sport in understanding adolescent males' views about their body. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 adolescent boys aged between 15 and 17 years. An inductive thematic analysis of boys' narratives showed that sport provided adolescent males with a context for discussing their body image. Attributes which males liked about their body were synonymous with those associated with being successful at sport. In addition, sport was used as a forum for competing with other males both through playing sport and by using sport performance to make favourable social comparisons about their body size.



Accountability, monitoring and surveillance: Body regulation in elite sport 


Suzanne Cosh, Shona Crabb, Amanda LeCouteur, Lisa Kettler
Journal of Health Psychology 2011 17:4, 610-622

Regulation of athletes’ bodies is commonplace in sporting environments, despite evidence that athletes have a higher risk of developing disordered eating than non-athletes. This article explores how athletes’ bodies are regulated in practice, building on examinations of body surveillance in other contexts. Over 40 interactions occurring during body monitoring are analysed. Athletes, pre-emptively or following an explicit request, accounted for their body regulatory behaviours, also working to produce positive athlete identities. Failing to produce an account of improvement was interactionally problematic, making visible athletes’ accountability to the institute to regulate their bodies. Implications of body regulatory practices are discussed.

Physical activity intensity and subjective well-being in healthy adults 

Gregory A Panza, beth A Taylor, Paul D Thompson, C Michael White, linda S Pescatello
Journal of Health Psychology 2017,

The effect of physical activity intensity on subjective well-being has not been well established. We examined this relationship among 419 healthy adults using objective and subjective physical activity measurements (sample size varied among well-being assessments). For accelerometers, light-intensity physical activity positively associated with psychological well-being (n = 150) and negatively associated with depression (n = 99); moderate intensity negatively associated with pain severity (n = 419) and positively associated with psychological well-being; sedentary behavior negatively associated with psychological well-being and positively associated with depression (ps < .05). These findings were generally consistent with subjective measurements of physical activity (Question 8, Paffenbarger Questionnaire). Higher levels of sedentary behavior are associated with lower subjective well-being.


Physical activity across the life-span: Does feeling physically younger help you to plan physical activities? 

Julian Wienert, Paul Gellert, Sonia Lippke
Journal of Health Psychology 2015 22:3, 324-335

We tested whether the relationship between subjective physical age and physical activity is mediated by planning. Participants came from a broad age range (25–78 years, M = 39.57, standard deviation = 10.75) and reported relatively good health (M = 3.36, standard deviation = 0.90). The model supported the suggested mediation (β = −.01, standard error = .01, p = .042). Feeling physically younger is associated with higher planning to adopt higher levels of physical activity and more planning is associated with more subsequent physical activity. Results open avenues for interventions that help people to become more active by focusing on subjective age. One way to do so might be tailoring approaches for interventions.


Physical activity–related social control and social support in older adults: Cognitive and emotional pathways to physical activity 

Jason T Newsom, Benjamin A Shaw, Kristin J August, Scott J Strath
Journal of Health Psychology 2016, 

A survey of 217 older adults assessed physical activity–related positive and negative social control and emotional and informational support, using structural equation modeling to investigate mediational effects of emotional responses and behavioral intentions on physical activity. There were significant indirect effects of social control and social support on intentions as mediated by positive, but not negative, emotional responses, and significant indirect effects of emotional responses on physical activity as mediated by intentions. These findings help to identify the cognitive and emotional pathways by which social control and social support may promote or detract from physical activity in later life.


The physical sacrifice of thinking: Investigating the relationship between thinking and physical activity in everyday life  

Todd McElroy, David L Dickinson, Nathan Stroh, Christopher A Dickinson
Journal of Health Psychology 2015 21:8, 1750-1757

Physical activity level is an important contributor to overall human health and obesity. Research has shown that humans possess a number of traits that influence their physical activity level including social cognition. We examined whether the trait of “need for cognition” was associated with daily physical activity levels. We recruited individuals who were high or low in need for cognition and measured their physical activity level in 30-second epochs over a 1-week period. The overall findings showed that low-need-for-cognition individuals were more physically active, but this difference was most pronounced during the 5-day work week and lessened during the weekend.

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